Kirill Moskalenko

Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko (11 May 1902-17 June 1985) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union during World War II, commanding the Soviet 40th Army during the war and the Moscow Military District after the war.

Biography
Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko was born on 11 May 1902 in Grishino, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now Pokrovsk Raion, Ukraine) to a family of Ukrainian peasants. He joined the Red Army in 1920 and fought in the Russian Civil War, and he served as an artillery commander during the Winter War in 1939. In June 1941, he was in command of an anti-tank brigade when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. From July to August 1942, he was in command of the 1st Guards Tank Army, and he later took command of the Soviet 40th Army, leading it at the Battle of Kursk and during the invasions of Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia from 1944 to 1945. In 1953, Moskalenko became the commander of the Moscow Military District, and he personally arrested Deputy Prime Minister Lavrentiy Beria at gunpoint during a coup staged by Georgy Zhukov and Nikita Khrushchev. As a reward for his role in overthrowing the Stalinist regime, he was made Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1955, and he served as commander-in-chief of the Soviet strategic rocket forces from 1960 to 1962 and as Inspector-General of the Ministry of Defense in 1962. He died in 1985 in Moscow.